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Ground control

ASTRONOMERS across the US are cringing over a proposal to shift
responsibility for funding ground-based telescopes to NASA. “I just don’t see
the point of this,” says Paul Vanden Bout, director of the National Radio
Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. A panel studying the idea
will report early next month.

The change was suggested in President Bush’s proposed budget for 2002. Many
astronomers are appalled by the prospect, saying it will only make funding
problems worse, and leave telescopes at the mercy of money-hungry space
projects.

At stake is the future of the radio observatory, the National Optical
Astronomy Observatory …